Mark Gerber, the former president of Adventure Manufacturing Inc., dba Timberland RV Co., has been appointed receiver by First Farmers Bank in Converse, Ind., to sell the assets of a company he co-founded 10 years ago.
”I’ve been hired back by the bank to liquidate the assets,” said Gerber, who left the Peru, Ind.-based towable manufacturer in January.
”Basically, the cause was the credit crisis. If the money flow is destroyed and everything is going out and nothing is coming in, you can’t do much business,” Gerber said.
The company stopped manufacturing units at the end of January and all finished product has been sold to dealers, Gerber said. ”There is still some raw materials to be sold,” he said. ”Everything should be completed within 30 days. We’ve been selling down pretty quickly.”
Gerber said that liquidation will occur via private sales rather than at auction.
Gerber left the company following a change late last summer in Adventure’s majority ownership. Despite his involvement as receiver, there is no plan to resurrect Adventure, he said. ”This is not a reorganization,” Gerber said. ”Adventure is dead.”
About 100 employees were laid off at the end of January when Adventure shuttered its two-building, 130,000-square-foot manufacturing campus about 75 miles south of Indiana’s RV-manufacturing hub in Elkhart, Ind.
Gerber founded Adventure in 1999 with operating partner Kean MacOwan, also a former Fleetwood executive, to build towables at the top of the entry-level segment. Within two years, the company was ranked 14th in retail sales. Before the company closed down in January, workers completed Adventure’s 13,000th travel trailer.
At its zenith, Adventure employed 300 people building Timberlodge, RPM, Chisholm Trail and Riverside towable lines.